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Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Why Workers’ Salaries Are Not Delayed In Bayelsa –Gov. Dickson

Bayelsa
State Governor, Seriake Dickson, during an interactive session with the
people of the state and media practitioners, including OSA Okhomina of
Leadership, talks about his administration’s relationship with the
workers in the state, the high rate of defection from PDP to APC and the
forthcoming governorship election in the state.
The gubernatorial
poll is now a few weeks away and some members of your party, the PDP,
are jumping the ship. What is your party doing to face up to the
challenge?
Well, let me assure you that this state is a solid PDP
state. In the last general elections we saw that a number of these big
wigs did not support the candidate of the mainstream party, the flag
bearer of the party, yet we won resoundingly and these were elections
that were far more keenly contested and more complicated.

And we
campaigned in every constituency. Opposition to the campaigns was
sponsored by our own party members, party stalwarts but in spite of all
interferences, in spite of all the intimidation, PDP won resoundingly
and you don’t need to look too far. Politics is not magic that you just
conjure victory overnight. No, victory comes as a result of a totality
of a lot of factors. Just because we have lost to APC at the general
elections, some fair weather politicians are running to APC as if they
can make APC win overnight.
Politics is not so. You are talking of
a party of three senators out of three senators, you are talking of a
party that has five out of five Reps members, and even at the worst of
times when PDP in Abuja was contending against PDP Bayelsa with the
support of faithful party members that we enjoy, we won three senatorial
seats, five Reps seats, and won 23 seats out of 24. And one is now at
the tribunal, though we still believe that even in that seat we should
have been declared winner.
Now, you have eight local government
areas, political appointees, commissioners, special assistants, board
chairmen and members, you have almost one hundred and five counselors.
How do you think you will suddenly, in two, three months almost
overnight overthrow that kind of party? And to cap it all you have a
performing governor on ground who knows elections, who is giving
effective, proactive and consistent leadership to the party, because if I
were not in position to give that leadership, let me tell you by now
you would not have PDP in Bayelsa, not with the forces that were arrayed
against this state and against our party. For more than three years I
contended against forces without complaining; stubbornly and rightly
resisting them in the interest of this state, in the interest of the
Ijaw nation.
Some members of the opposition party have insisted
that your claim over the funding of the flyover bridge built by your
administration is filled with lies. Why did your administration fund
some of these projects but fail to the flyover officially commission
them for the benefit of the people?
All these projects in Bayelsa I
wish to state unequivocally were conceived, designed, funded and
completed by the government of Bayelsa. There is not one that was not
funded by the government of Bayelsa hundred percent and I believe
everybody knows.
I think what happened is this, everybody wants to
be governor, every character, once you are 35 years. develop a
governorship ambition Any position you hold you don’t use it to help the
people, you don’t use it to work for the state, you use it to fight for
governorship. That is what is happening in Bayelsa. So, a lot of people
who were not in Bayelsa have had the inordinate ambition but were
intimidated by the performance of my government and they say Ah… with
the way this man is going if we don’t throw stories around and take away
the credit that should go to him and his government we won’t be able to
contest an election again. So, they started concocting stories to
deceive the poor unsuspecting people of Bayelsa that these are federal
projects.There is no federal project that they will do and give you the
money, there must be a contract, it must be in the budget and they will
pass the budget, they will award it, and they will come and supervise
and finish it.
Some 200 graduands claimed to have been abandoned
by the state government in the country where they went for overseas
training. Is it true? We will also like to know why they are not
absorbed into the Civil Service as promised?
Well, it was this
government that sent young people to Songhai but you see a lot of things
have happened with the economy. Not many people in Bayelsa probably
know that we are facing a very strong financial situation. People think
there is so much money in government such that when you come to the
Government House you just come with a truck and begin to pack money and
they say often that the governor “no dey release money”. But they don’t
ask often whether there is money.
Our programme of reintegrating
them was affected but don’t worry a number of the agricultural
programmes that we thought they would be deployed into are getting
completed. The poultry, piggery, the cassava farm, the rice mills, a
number of them are getting completed. It was funding constraints that we
had; the speed we were going at was such that if the revenue had not
come down by now we would have completed all these projects and we would
have been thinking of other ones. But we were slowed down and we are
working on it.
You talked about civil service; again you don’t
just recruit people into the civil service, there are areas of need.
Already, we have an over- bloated civil service. Anybody who is coming
to promise you recruitment into the civil service is not qualify to be
governor; tell the person so. But there are areas of need that we have
identified for for employment opportunities .
How is your
relationship with the State Workforce and why is it that your
administration was not affected by the delay in workers’ salaries? And
why was Bayelsa not included in the recent bailout offered by the
Federal Government?
You spoke about payment of salaries and
everyone knows that in Bayelsa State we don’t owe salaries, we are not
in arrears of salaries. We are also not in arrears in paying retirees.
Only yesterday, I met with the pensioners and they expressed their
appreciation for the efforts of the government. The only challenge we
have is about gratuity which has lingered for about 10 years. But in
terms of regular payment of salaries, Bayelsa is not owing and we are
also not owing pensioners.
What are the measures we have put in
place? It’s a combination of prudence and the selfless dedication of my
team. For us, the people’s interest comes first and that’s why even in
my office for three months running, there has been no running cost paid.
We don’t also have overhead paid for three months now, all because we
want to ensure that salaries of workers are paid.
Osa Okhomina— Jul 21, 2015 LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPER

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Again,
in keeping with my stated principle of promising less and delivering
more, I, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, in breaking with the past have in the
first budget presented while I am president allocated the lion's share
of N933. 480 billion to education. This is 3 times what was allocated to
the next highest sector, defence, at N313. 769 billion. GEJ